~ The Writings of S.L. Woodford

Category Archives: Fashion

“Oh my God, I don’t want to do it. I don’t want to do my laundry. But I need clean stockings and underwear.” I say to my roommate as she makes hot chocolate in our kitchen.

She looks at me bemusedly, like she always does when I have slightly ridiculous outbursts of passion, usually brought on by the inevitability of certain despised household chores.

“Yes, laundry is annoying to do. But you’ll get it done.”

I smile and walk into my bedroom, internally loathing the reality that clothes do not stay clean and that I must now deal with colorful piles of chaos and brave the dusty basement.
I turn my hamper onto the floor, bracing myself for the awful clutter of cotton and color, but only blue and black greets my eye. I breath out. Where are my whites? My yellows and reds? Why aren’t they adorning this sea of dark colors with complication?

Then I remember: they are tucked away in their own pillowcases, already sorted and ready for the washer. A new method a friend of mine recently taught me (after I whined to her about doing laundry one too many times).

I don’t have to brave the colorful chaos.
It is already vanquished.

But, I feel my body bracing itself, a new dread taking hold.

“Oh my God, I don’t want to do it. I don’t want to do my laundry. It’s way too easy now.” I say to the orderly pile below me.

It says nothing back and I laugh as I pick up my first load and walk towards the basement. As much as I hate doing laundry, I’m apparently going to miss whining about the process.

I went through my bookcases last weekend. I figured it was probably time since I had to step around a fort-like structure of bindings and dust to get to my desk.

So, with reusable bag in hand I went to work…and found out that my book keeping rational was very similar to the clothes keeping rational women with overflowing closets seem to possess. Just like that pair of jeans from high school, the study of Normative Ethics will never fit me again. There was a brief time in grad school when the ideas suited me, but now they just feel uncomfortable and outdated. And do I really need that commentary on Amos? Yes, the book is big, beautiful, and impressive—but I never use it. It just sits on the shelf gathering dust, like that overly shiny halter dress you bought to go clubbing in (and face it, you will never go clubbing).

Cleaning out my bookcases made me realize that when I have a disposable income, I waste it on books instead of clothing. In my youth, this habit made me quietly smug. I was not one of those shallow girls preoccupied with fashion and boys. Oh no, I was much better than that because I would buy books to read…and one day, I would impress some Austenesque fellow with my intellect and profound understanding of the world.

Book after book went into my reusable bag. These weighty tomes of Western thinking might as well have been outdated dresses and blouses. Yes, I bought books to improve my intellect, but I bought books that I didn’t need, that I wouldn’t read, that I would abandon the minute they lost popularity. My sin is just as bad as your average shopaholic.

There is room on my bookcases now. Let us hope that I’ve learned my lesson. Especially since I can order any book that I wish—for free—through our university’s library system.

There it is: a jumble of colors, shapes, and textures splayed out upon my floor. The farthest reaches of the piles snake out in crumpled desperation, reaching out to me, reaching out to my bedroom’s four walls.

I stare at them, as a slightly sick feeling quietly gargles in my stomach. I’ve sorted my dirty laundry, it’s now in piles (chaotic, fibrous piles of doom) on my bedroom floor. All I have to do now is take it downstairs, put it in a washing machine, and be at the mercy of the laundry cycle for the rest of the day.

And interspersed between the washing and drying will be folding. A shit ton of folding. I don’t like folding things. That is why the vast majority of my wardrobe already lives on hangers.

I swallow. Wait. I still have underwear. I still have stockings and leggings. Do I really need to do laundry now? Is this a chore I must get done today?

Carefully, I step around the cloth blob that is now my bedroom floor and open my closet door. There is that blue sundress from high school I never wear. Perhaps I could pair it with a short-sleeved red blazer that has been gathering dust this season. The colors will contrast in interesting ways. And here is that leopard print wrap dress from Ann Taylor that makes me feel like a loud, Las Vegas brod who frequently hangs out with the Rat Pack, smoking cigars and drinking scotch. I’lI play up that aesthetic by adding bright accessories—a turquoise belt and a fuchsia camisole underneath. Or, what about my bright green and blue argyle cardigan? An amazing statement piece that I never wear enough. It would look stunning over my forest green dress—add an oxblood colored belt and heels, and I’d be set.

I step away from my closet and promptly return the clothing piles on my floor to the hamper. Clearly, I have enough outfits in my closet to last me a few more days. And I’m excited about them! They will be new combinations, adding life and creativity to my wardrobe.

That sick feeling in my stomach is gone, replaced by the warm, fluttering feeling I get when I’m making something new. Perhaps I take laundry procrastination to new heights (remember, I still have underwear, stockings, and leggings), but at least there is art and creativity up there.

As the days begin to get warmer and we begin to anticipate spring, I get to anticipate something else, just as lively, just as youthful: bobbing my hair.

After work, I shall happily walk to my downtown salon where my stylist will greet me with a hug and a smile. It will be under her loving and creative eye that my thick, wavy locks will become straight and precisely angular. Transformed, I’ll step out into the New Haven night, my gait now adjusted to a new-found, joyous swagger.

I used to have long hair as a teenager. Like really, really, long hair. All the way down to my waist. It took forever to wash and dry every morning because it was so thick—I’d spend at least an hour on its upkeep everyday. And, in order to tame its long, wild waviness, I spent a lot of my allowance and summer job money on hair products and blow dryers.

But, when I bobbed my hair in my early twenties, something wonderful happened: My hair regiment became both luxurious and speedy.

Now, I could justify buying expensive hair products. A twenty dollar bottle of shampoo would last me months rather than weeks. And, if I’d let my bob air-dry with a little bit of leave-in conditioner, I could fill up my mornings with new activities. That hour I used to spend washing and drying my hair I currently spend on doing household chores and writing. Both activities are much more sanity-inducing and soul-nurturing than standing in front of a mirror, blasting my head with hot air, ever was.

Transformed, I’ll step out into the New Haven night, my gait now adjusted to a new-found, joyous swagger.

I must confess that wearing my hair in a bob makes me feel like a rebel. Though, given this haircut’s legacy, I think that I have every right to feel a bit daring when there is more of my hair on the salon floor than on my head. Did you know that in the 1920s bobbed hair was met with raised eyebrows and shock? Young women who undertook the cut were considered unladylike upstarts by America’s then older generations. Simply by shedding those extra layers of tresses, young women began to give themselves permission to take new, individual risks in their daily lives. Risks that worried the conformist, virtuous group-think of those who came of age in the mid to late Nineteenth Century.

My favorite contemporary example of this courageous personal daring occurs in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story, “Bernice Bobs Her Hair.” Bernice, a pretty, but timid and dull Midwestern girl, visits her lively East Coast cousin, Marjorie. To help her overcome her dullness (and give herself something to do), Marjorie teaches Bernice how to flirt with rich, Ivy League boys, an action that costs Marjorie her own popularity. To regain her status as alpha female, Marjorie then emotionally blackmails Bernice into getting her hair bobbed—right before the young women attend a ball at the home of a staunch anti-bob society family! So, what does timid, dull Bernice do in return? Not what you’d expect. Her short hair gives her the freedom and the courage to enact revenge on her catty cousin in a rather fitting way: Marjorie also gets her hair bobbed before the ball…but, the cut happens with a pair of household shears and while she is asleep.

I think about Bernice a lot as as I rush around my house in the morning, barely keeping to schedule, but always deeply grateful for those few extra moments of writing time, or chore time, the a.m. hours continue to grant me. I think the older generations of the early Twentieth Century were right to fear the bob. It did (and does) give a rather particular freedom to women. The freedom to pursue personal development rather than a generic, societal beauty role. Though Amanda Palmer said it (or something very similar to it) about the maintenance of female body hair (or perhaps it was one of her fans who said it and she took up its mantle), I think it also applies to the bob: “The less time I spend on hair care, the more time I have for the Revolution.”

I couldn’t agree more. Even if my “Revolution” is an open space for morning writing and chores, my bobbed hair and I definitely have more time for it.

This weekend, I almost succumbed to a new force of fragrance. I almost bought Chanel No. 5.

There it was, on the department store counter, clothed in its elegant, geometric bottle, beckoning to me, inviting me into its sensual history. Created in 1921 by Coco Chanel, this was the designer’s distillation of what she thought a woman should smell like. This was the scent loved by Marilyn Monroe, a few drops of it her only consistent bed partner during her all too short life.

I picked up the bottle and sprayed its contents on my wrist. Immediately, I was greeted by the scent of bergamot and powder. A few minutes more and my skin oil changed the perfume’s configuration. Now, the watery sweet smell of lily of the valley emerged from its vortex of musk and citrus.

I liked it. But, it didn’t really smell like me.

Perfume, I find, is a lot like fashion. Depending on what you wear, you can change your image, change how people perceive you. Perhaps when I am in my fifties, with my white hair piled atop my head in a Victorian bun, I would be able to wear Chanel No. 5 in all its musky gravitas. But now, I am in my late twenties, with short hair and a lot of life to live.

I walked away from counter and out into the February day. The wind on the other side of the sliding doors blew into my face, bringing with it the smell of black current, sandalwood, musk, and vanilla. I remember smiling. The Burberry Women I sprayed on my neck that morning was still there, subtly enveloping me in its elegant, earthy scent. Here was a perfume I wore to work and to parties and to galas. A scent whose vanilla notes intensified when I went on long runs and whose sandalwood mingled with the smell of bark and moss when I climbed the occasional tree. This was a perfume that held me in its warm, quiet embrace as I drifted off to sleep

When I wake up in the morning, I know that I shall have a good day if I dress like London. No, not dress for London–though with my penchant for tweeds and classic tailoring, I wouldn’t mind that at all–but like London. Like its architectural aesthetic.

London is always changing: it is a sleek, modern place full of the international, the brilliant, and the rich. But, that sleek modernism also comes with a heavy accent of sentimentalism. Even as it changes, London keeps old bits of itself around: Roman roads, the Georgian columns of Saint Paul, the pock-marked buildings of the blitz, the British Museum’s dusty and priceless spoils of Empire. London wears its history, and the triumph and pain that accompanies it, in an elegantly eclectic mess. A mess only London can make.

London gets its soul and its cohesion from the way it wears its personal history. No other city could perfectly imitate that–it wouldn’t have the same stories to draw inspiration from.

And every morning, as I open my closet, I think of London. In a haze of sleepiness and artistic fervor, I put on a wool skirt that was once my mother’s, a leather corset belt I bought after months of waiting for it to go on sale, a silver tank top I purchased as a graduate student, an argyle sweater with tiny, punk rock holes, created by an unfortunate infestation of moths, and a pinstripe blazer with bright yellow elbow patches, sold to me by two rocker chicks as they swigged white wine and giggled about Mick Jagger’s sex life. Each piece that I put on my body is a memento of my life experiences. Reminding me of where I’ve been and accompanying me as I try to become something new.

A week ago, from across the pond, it finally arrived: My very own copy of The Official Sloane Ranger Handbook.

First published in 1982, this was England’s answer to America’s The Official Preppy Handbook. A book that sought to pinpoint “What Really Mattered” (WRM) to the English upper classes, outlining everything from the proper contents of a girl’s jewelry cases (lots of gold and pearls, easy on the costume stuff–like Art Nouveau) to the proper animal companion for fashionable London town houses and countryside manors (the Labrador). Diana, the then hot, young Princess of Wales, or PoWess in affectionate Sloane speak, clad in her high-ruffled collars and pearls, was the Platonic ideal for the hard-core Sloane.

Flipping through the pages, I am treated to black and white snap shots of crisp, English tailoring for the men and flouncing, floral ruffles for the ladies. The Sloane style in general is a bit too soft and demure for me–I look horrid in pastels–but, I’m drawn to a look called “Baby Legs,” popular with the younger set:

From: The Official Sloane Ranger Handbook, page 29.

The essence of “Baby Legs” is blending preppy wardrobe staples with a 1980s punk sensibility. A delightful example of how a young woman can take an old, accepted style of clothing and transform it with subtle, yet arty flair to suit herself. It’s rebellion with diamanté.

But, the real joy for me comes not from the pictures, but from the prose, which simpers and sparkles as it articulates WRM to its ignorant reader. A few of my favorite excerpts so far:

“The Rangers’ favorite bit of the past is the English eighteenth century…The nineteenth century is when the Bad Things came in: industry, towns, new money and the wrong kind of legs on furniture.”

“She would not wear Art Nouveau jewels (too way out) or Art Deco Cartier, which might remind her of a Bolter in the family.”

Hysterical. Hysterical in an understatedly catty way that makes me think of Victorian diaries and Jane Austen-esque drawing rooms.

I have no doubt that The Sloane Ranger will be an excellent asset to my library. A book that I may read seriously one day and ironically, the next. I shall definitely draw fashion inspiration from “Baby Legs,” but I shall never see the harm in wearing Art Nouveau jewels.

A hand small, withered–yet elastic in its joints and tendons–darts into the periphery of my right eye’s vision: at its finger tips, a glint of lush purple-red. I put down the butter knife I am using to make a sandwich.

“What is it, Grandma?”

“It’s my mother’s wedding ring.”

I take the ring with its high golden Tiffany setting and hold it in my left hand, the kitchen’s afternoon light catches the large ruby at the ring’s center, sending the stone into glittering fits of red. This was the ring my great-grandmother wore on her wedding day. The ring she kept on her bedroom dresser for most of the Depression, because she didn’t want the suds and grime of her extra cleaning jobs to ruin it.

I turn the ring to get a better look at the stone’s cut, and another reddish flash shouts from further down my hand: another ruby, jauntily tilted in its golden Art Nouveau setting. A ring that belonged to my other great-grandmother. A much-loved piece of jewelry she wore daily from high school graduation until her fiancé replaced it with a fine, large diamond in a band of platinum.

“Yes Grandma, I think I will wear it. Thank you for passing it along to me.”

Gently, I slip my new ruby ring onto my left middle finger, two different rings rest side by side. Yet, both bands share the unquenchable fire of the ruby, glittering eternally in each setting’s center–a purple-red hue that surely matches the purple-red blood flowing through my finger’s veins, through the veins of my Grandmother’s wrinkled hands.